Shah of Shahs: An Old Book About the New Iran

Why hasn't Mir Hussein Moussavi been arrested? Why isn't President Obama more outspoken? And when does an "uprising" become a "revolution"?

As anti-opposition violence grew worse in Iran today, it appears the questions on both sides are becoming more difficult, not less. But the closest thing to an answer might be Ryszard Kapuściński's Shah of Shahs, his classic book about the 1979 overthrow of Iran's last Shah. As Kapuściński points out, pro-Democratic uprisings aren't anything new in the country, "and when one knows about that tradition one can understand how they've managed to spark."

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Kapuściński wasn't from Iran and didn't know Farsi, but he witnessed the Iranian Revolution while holed in a Tehran hotel room, where he later hoarded photographs, scraps of notes, and taped conversations for clues to what exactly had happened. The differences remain stark — then, the contested leader was a pro-U.S. secularist, now he's an anti-Western zealot — but the similarities are starker still: Pro-Democratic demonstrations lasted for twelve months, tens of thousands were wounded or died, and the whole movement was sparked by a simple sentence. Then, it was "The Shah must go." Today, protesters in Tehran's Revolutionary Circle are shouting "Down with the dictator." And if Kapuściński is right, that line won't fade quickly: "Words that open our mind to the world are always the easiest to remember." Skip the beach reads and pick it up for this weekend.